News-Info-Alerts

Re: WW II Honors

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: June 17, 2003

"STEADY AS SHE BLOWS: Sailors on the Japanese Defence Force training ship Kashima hold on to their hats as strong winds greet them on their arrival in Wellington yesterday.

Japanese warship visits Capital

By HANK SCHOUTEN

The gleaming Japanese Maritime Defence Force naval training ship Kashima made an impressive entrance into Wellington yesterday.

The 4000-tonne ship fired its gun in a salute reciprocated by the battery at Pt Jerningham as it came into port.

The Kashima with a crew of 360 – twice the complement of a New Zealand frigate – berthed at Aotea Quay to take on fuel before being manoeuvred to Queens Wharf where it will be berthed till Friday.

Officers stood on the upper decks as it came alongside to tunes from the ship's brass band.

Rear Admiral Masahiko Sugimoto said the visit by his three-ship squadron – two smaller ships berthed in Auckland – was to give the 760 officers and crew a chance to learn about New Zealand.

Admiral Sugimoto, who commanded a Japanese squadron in the Indian Ocean last year as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, said he looked forward to a warm welcome.

The ship's company will spend today sightseeing. Tomorrow, Admiral Sugimoto and officers will lay wreaths at the Cenotaph and in the Garden of Remembrance in Featherston, formerly the site of a prisoner-of-war camp where 47 Japanese prisoners were shot in a "riot" in 1943.

Kashima and the other ships, Hamayuki and Sawagiri, left Japan on April 24. New Zealand is the fourth of 10 countries they will be visiting over 138 days.

Kashima was in Wellington seven years ago. "